


ok, who had natural disasters on their 2020 bingo card?

by escapismandsharpobjects



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Extreme Weather, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Natural Disasters, Whump, Whumptober 2020, but the other 2 are there too!, i guess its just like a storm and a flash flood but, its mostly eddie for the majority of it, jsyk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27238027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escapismandsharpobjects/pseuds/escapismandsharpobjects
Summary: whumptober day 27 - prompt: extreme weather. eddie gets caught in a flash flood.
Relationships: Eddie Diaz & Henrietta "Hen" Wilson, Eddie Diaz & Howie "Chimney" Han (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	ok, who had natural disasters on their 2020 bingo card?

**Author's Note:**

> hi!! i hope that you like this story, also probably don't think too hard about the mechanics of it all i did absolutely No Research on how flash floods work except to find out that they do in fact happen in california so. the details are surely far from accurate. but who needs accuracy, right?

The flood had come on suddenly. One second, he’d been standing in knee-deep water, uncomfortable, to be sure, but in no real danger, and the next, a wave of water swept over him, and he was pulled beneath the surface.

For a moment, it was sheer panic, as Eddie tried frantically to orient himself in the water. And then something swept past below him, and got caught on his pants, pulling him down further beneath the surface.

This was mostly not good, but it did tell Eddie which was way up. Granted, that was the opposite direction than the one in which he’d just been pulled, but now he knew the way out. If only he could pull his leg free of whatever had grabbed onto it. 

Blinking his eyes open in the murky water, Eddie searched around for the thing that was stopping him from escaping, finally locating a piece of wood with nails sticking out of it, three of which had gotten stuck in the fabric of his pants. He fumbled with them for too long, feeling himself go lightheaded as his air supply started to run out. 

The second he was free of the nails, he started swimming upwards, but a sudden wave passed through the water, pushing him horizontally and disrupting his motion. After the movement had settled, he again started pushing upwards, and was nearly to the surface when his lungs just couldn’t take their emptiness anymore, and he took an involuntary breath. 

Water flooded into his mouth and nose, making him cough and choke and inhale more water consequently. His chest burned like it was on fire, and then, just as he felt the edges of unconsciousness creeping in, his head broke above the surface of the water, and he took a desperate, gasping breath that was more a cough than anything else. 

After a few such breaths, the burning in his lungs calmed down enough for him to focus, and he took a second to assess his situation. He was still in the water, of course, keeping his legs as bunched up as he could while still treading water in an effort to make sure nothing else grabbed onto him and pulled him back under. Looking around, he could see the house he’d been in front of just a few minutes before, now submerged to the second story. He was down the street from it, but plenty close enough to see that, a few houses down, the water level sank dramatically. 

His crew would be over there somewhere, he realized. They’d been evacuating residents when the flash flood had hit, but he was pretty sure he had been the only one down the street this far, meaning that the rest of his teammates would be okay, and on dry (or, as dry as it could get in a torrential downpour, anyway) land. All he had to do was get to them, and everything would be fine.

He began the slow process of swimming towards the end of the street. The water was flowing against him, though, which made movement hard, and he was barely halfway there when his arms started to go numb. It was then that he realized the rest of his body was also on its way to being numb, though whether that was from exhaustion or cold he couldn’t tell. His head sank under the water for a second, and he came back up, gasping for air, his strength somewhat renewed in his panic.

After a very long time of swimming desperately, feeling like he couldn’t go on, sinking under the water, shooting back up in a panic, and repeating the process again, Eddie’s feet finally touched the ground. He continued walking for another very long time, slowly slogging his way out of the water, until at last, he was completely back on solid land. Distantly, he saw figures approaching in the twilight, lights bobbing. He hoped that they could see him, because he absolutely did not have the strength to call out to them.

Eddie collapsed to the soggy grass, as his exhausted legs finally gave out for good. He shook from head to foot, and everything was cold and wet and achy and he just wanted it all to stop, but unconsciousness now stubbornly refused to grab hold of him, so he closed his eyes and tried not to think instead, slowly fading into unawareness.

And then, voices surrounded him. Someone rolled him onto his back and shined a light in his eyes. Someone else put fingers against his neck. One of the voices said something, not that Eddie was in any shape to hear what it said. 

Evidently, though, the voice had not been directed at him, because nobody tried to make him respond. Instead, someone picked him up, and then carried him somewhere, and then he found himself sitting propped up on a gurney in the back of an ambulance, with an IV in his arm and a blanket around his shoulders, not entirely aware of how he’d gotten there.

After a minute or two of silence, Eddie began to feel slightly more lucid. He spoke, for the first time in quite a while. “What…” was as far as he could get before a violent cough cut him off.

“You got caught in a flash flood,” said Hen’s voice from beside him, the first voice he could actually recognize. 

“Scared us half to death,” came Chim’s voice, from across the ambulance. “You better not do it again.”

“I won’t,” Eddie promised, though he recognized he didn’t have much choice in that matter. He coughed again, tasting the awful water at the back of his throat. He decided he didn’t like being aware very much. Before, he’d been kind of numb to the extent of how everything felt, but now he could feel it all in terrible detail. His lungs still ached from his inhalation of the water, he was freezing, he was  _ wet, _ he was absolutely and completely exhausted, and whatever was in the IV didn’t feel like it was doing much for any of that.

“I feel...really bad,” he said, closing his eyes and taking as deep a breath as he could manage.

Hen wrapped a gentle arm around his shoulders, pulling him close and letting him rest his head on her shoulder. “I know, buddy,” she said. 

“We’re taking you to the hospital, if that makes you feel better,” Chim chimed in, reaching out and patting him on the knee. “And they’ll check you out and tell you to take a few days off of work, and you’ll get to relax at home while the rest of us are stuck cleaning this storm up.”

Eddie managed a very small smile at that. 

“Sounds nice.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks a bunch for reading!! hope you liked this and please let me know what you think!


End file.
